Now that I am becoming more tuned into GTD, and the wonders of Apple Mail, I keep discovering other solutions to the problems of managing work.

A few weeks ago, Foldera launched as a private beta. Foldera aims to provide a project-oriented view of a wide range of information. It’s a hosted service that on first glance looks like someone took all the current and upcoming 37signals applications and bundled them into a Entourage-style interface.

This seems like a good idea. If I’m working on Project A, I can go to one place and see everything related to the project – e-mails, tasks, contacts etc. The problem is that it doesn’t help decide what to do Now. That’s the amazing thing about GTD.

I performed yesterday’s weekly review using kGTD and I now have a list of things I need to do next week, in one place. Those things are also in their respective projects. Yup. Two views of the same information. I can also see at a glance everything I need to do in one place. Yup. Three views. kGTD also hides from certain views things I don’t need to see until they are due. This reduces brain clutter. It’s all very well having things organised – each in their place – but problems start arising when you can see everything you need to do now, have done or will need to do. It becomes overwhelming.

There are a lot of programs that provide multiple ad-hoc views of the same information. Apple Mail, however, is the one that beats them all. If I send an e-mail to someone that I also need to action, I e-mail a special address. When Apple Mail receives my e-mail it files it in my Actions folder, because Apple Mail does rules.

Smart Mailboxes are also an incredible feature. I can create ‘folders’ of messages based on pretty much anything I feel like. This allows me to create folders for projects, for people, words, phrases, Actions from a specific project – because Smart Mailboxes can use other Smart Mailboxes as input. You can group Smart Mailboxes into another folder and folders can be organised hierarchically. Of course, folders can also be created and populated manually.

Want a Smart Mailbox containing old mail messages which I haven’t read for three months that contain attachments? I do. Apple Mail can do it. I also have everything I’ve sent to or received from a particular client automatically available in one place. When you have these facilities, you start to rethink what you really want to know and how you want it organised.

Then there are the contextual menus – allowing quick filing of messages in your inbox. Who needs SpeedFiler? Ah, but that Windows application is going to have multiple tags in its new version. Apple Mail knows nothing about tags, but MailTags does:

MailTags is a plug in for Apple Mail. Yes, it does multiple tags for mail messages. It’s seamlessly integrated with Apple Mail, which means it works with Smart Mailboxes. Then there’s Act-On which provides enhanced automated and manual filing triggered by keystrokes.

All of this just helps me get my life done.